#37: Ministering to College Students

Kevin Smith:
Welcome to Peculiar People, a podcast where we examine what it means to be a follower of the Lord, Jesus Christ. In the days in which we find ourselves, we base that on Peter’s exhortation, that we will be a peculiar people who should show forth the praises of him who has brought us from darkness into the marvelous light. So we engage this by having a variety of conversations with members of local churches and pastors and leaders of local churches. And today we are blessed to speak with Pastor Rob Stephens, who is the pastor of Aletheia Church, which is in the College Park, Maryland area, right in the vicinity of the largest university in our two-state convention, the Baptist Convention in Maryland, Delaware, which is the University of Maryland at College Park, thousands of students. And we are so pleased to be able to talk with a pastor who is planting a church in that area, and also has been involved in campus ministry on the campus there. And so Pastor Stephens, welcome to peculiar people. How are you doing today, my brother?

Rob Stephens:
I am doing well, brother. Thank you for inviting me to be here. Always a pleasure to spend time with you, bro.

Kevin Smith:
I appreciate the fellowship. We are peculiar people because Jesus has changed us and we are his disciples. And so we always open up by asking a brother or sister to just share briefly how they became a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Rob Stephens:
Yeah. Amen. Well, I became a disciple of Christ, like everyone, by God’s miraculous grace opening the eyes of my heart to the Gospel, but the means by which that happened, came through the grace of Christian parents who raised me in a Christian home. I grew up in North Carolina in the buckle of the Bible belt. And man, I’m just really thankful that I had a mom and dad who loved Jesus and took me to church. And from an early age I heard the good news of Christ and it was at a children’s Bible camp, Hickory Cove Bible Camp, that probably the thousandth time that I heard the Gospel, I finally said, you know what, I need Jesus and I raised my hand during invitation time and sat down with a leader and asked Christ to be my savior and Lord not knowing what I was getting into. But yeah, I’m really thankful to have become a follower of Christ by his grace as a young child. I was probably like nine years old, got baptized in my local church there. Long journey of discipleship and growing into what it means to be a disciple of the Lord. But that’s how I became a Christian.

Kevin Smith:
Amen. What a glorious testimony. Well, tell us how old is Aletheia Church. Describe the area where you are located. We are excited for, First Corinthians 12 says we are one body in Christ, but many members. And so I always enjoy exposing other local churches to other local churches. And so tell us a little bit of the story of Aletheia.

Rob Stephens:
Yeah, well, man, one of my favorite stories to tell. So we moved here from Harrisonburg, Virginia in 2013. Previously I’d been a youth minister in Howard County at a church, a little church called Gethsemane Baptist, which is now Burtwoods Church, but God called us into church planting. We knew we wanted to plant our church specifically in a collegiate town. We just really had a heart for college students and got introduced to a network that was planting churches in collegiate towns, called Aletheia, which was sort of based out of Harrisonburg, Virginia there where James Madison University is. For two years, we did some training, kind of an apprenticeship with that church. And then we moved here with a small team of people in August of 2013. And just began sort of that missionary work, where we were just planting lots of Gospel seed.

Rob Stephens:
We had gathered a small group, maybe about 20 people that included probably about six people who’d moved with us. And 10 to 15 more that God had brought into our life who were already Christians. A good portion of those were students at the University of Maryland that we actually got hooked up with through Jessica Senasack who runs the BCM. So it was a great blessing to our church planting efforts here. And so for about four or five months, we just met in the basement of my house here and we just dreamed and prayed and taught. We spent probably three months just taking apart, Acts 2:42, just talking about what the church is, that snapshot of the early church and talking about being what it means to be a covenant community, what it means to be a sacramental community and all that.

Rob Stephens:
And so it wasn’t until the spring of 2014 that we actually covenanted as a church. And at that point we were still meeting in our basement, but that’s when we became a legitimate church taking the Lord’s supper and living in that kind of covenant relationship together. So yeah, that was sort of those beginning early days of that. It very quickly became apparent our house was not going to be sufficient for the amount of people that were coming. Although we love having them here, small little modest church planter house. So by God’s grace, we found a hotel in the area that had a little conference room. It was probably the most ghetto hotel you’ll ever find in your life, but it was cheap, which is that’s music to a church planner’s ears, cheap. So we started gathering there outside of my home.

Rob Stephens:
I guess that’s when it felt a little bit more like, Hey, we’re doing this church thing. That spring, I guess it was probably March or April of 2014 when that happened. And yeah, and that following school year, man, we really were able to hit the campus hard and do a lot of ministry there. And the Lord just really began to grow us in fruit from ministry on the campus. So that’s sort of the beginning stages of how our church came to be. Again, we’ve sort of been a moving target as far as location, so we were in my house for five months, I think, something like that. And then we were at this hotel and then we moved to a high school and then we moved to an elementary school that was right beside campus because that’s where we wanted to be.

Rob Stephens:
And through the pandemic, we’ve been actually worshiping at a sister church Greenbelt Baptist Church who has graciously just been amazing hosts to us during a time where we didn’t have a place to meet. But this coming Sunday, actually, we’re going to be back at Paint Branch Elementary School, sort of getting back into those rhythms of ministry. So I don’t know if that’s more than you wanted or-

Kevin Smith:
No, that is wonderful.

Kevin Smith:
And Paint Branch is back in the range of the college campus.

Rob Stephens:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s probably half a mile from campus, maybe less, so it’s a walkable distance for students if they want to walk when it’s nice and pretty. So, which is right where we want to be, we want to be where we can access the campus easily.

Kevin Smith:
Six years in, as a pastor, as a church planning pastor, what would you look back and say, ah, man, I should have told the first year in myself, this? What lessons have been learned?

Rob Stephens:
Man, so many lessons. I’ll tell you one thing that I tell a lot of guys who are in that initial stage of planting is, enjoy those early days. I think we get so caught up sometimes in thinking about, okay, well we got to get this in place and that in place. And then we’ll really be doing ministry. And you know, when I look back at those initial, that first year, those are some sweet times, man, of fellowship, of team building. And I miss a lot of that now that we’re more established and I praise God that we’re more established, but really, just relish the moment. Don’t forget the beauty and the joys of those early preparations and launching days, thinking about the next step. So that’s one thing I would say. I don’t know if that’s the most impactful thing. That’s the first thing that popped into my mind.

Kevin Smith:
No, I think, especially pastorally, I encourage guys, before they’re funded, before they’re launching and all that, don’t overlook the discipleship and just the sweet pastoral moment of developing that core group. I don’t have favoritisms or whatever, but that first 25, 30 people that you just dream with and you do stuff with and y’all’s setting up and then breaking down. And I remember an older sister, her trunk was like our office. She put these shelves so you would open the trunk this shelving system would fall down. And I mean, just all that stuff of the mobile and the flexible, but yet a group of people committed to a local expression of the kingdom of God. Yeah. Don’t take those early moments and those “smaller moments” for granted because they are delightful.

Kevin Smith:
I love, man, I loved having everybody’s number in my cell phone. That was like a sweet time. You can’t do that at a certain point, but early on, man, that was just a sweet, sweet, sweet moment. So let me ask you in six years, I know you can’t remember everything, but in six years, I remember the first sermon I preached when we planted a church. I remember the first couple of series I preached. So in your core group, you were examining the Book of acts and examining the New Testament models of a local congregational life. But when you begin to launch and you begin to engage the campus, what were your first one or two maybe series or books of the scripture that you preached?

Rob Stephens:
Yeah. Ooh. I know we did a series and this was sort of out of our norm because we’re very much an expositional preaching church. We go verse by verse through books of the Bible. But I know we did one early on just talking about how the Gospel frees us for Gospel truths, oh gosh, I’m blanking. There’s a book called You Can Change. It gets by Tim Chester. And he talks about these four powerful Gospel truths and how it frees us to live our lives. I remember we did that right out of the gate, man, because we really wanted to, I mean, what do you want to get right in your church, the Gospel, right? That’s what you really want to hammer home. And so everything we did early on was just focused on making sure we had a clear understanding of the Gospel.

Rob Stephens:
I know in our community groups, the very first thing that we did, this is out of our norm as well. We normally do community groups in connection to the sermon series, but we did a book study through JD Greer’s book, The Gospel, because we wanted to hammer that home. Our discipleship was like, we try to make sure everybody went through this little workbook called The Gospel Primer where we started learning Gospel fluency. That was really, really important to us to talk about, what the Gospel was early on.

Kevin Smith:
Amen. Amen. Let me ask you a question about College Park. I’m only one person and obviously, there’s a narrative of the university and the secular elites. And obviously, you have students on campus, you have professors and others who live in the community there of College Park. How have you found the reception, not specifically to the Gospel as in John One, those who received him, those who received him not, but just even receptivity to meeting people, friendship, and conversation? Are people more hostile? And I say that because I used to live in New York City. I’ve lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, been near universities, been in the urban areas, city areas, been around people who have considered themselves elite, but haven’t had too much problem just kind of getting a conversation going. And I’ve been in Harley shops all over the country. So as an Acts 1:8 witness in Jerusalem Sumeria, but we’ll just start with College Park, how have you found receptivity to even just being a herald for Christ?

Rob Stephens:
Yeah. Well, I think in general there’s been a general receptivity to conversations, particularly on campus. I mean, campus is it’s own bubble. So it’s hard to define College Park and certainly not Prince George’s County by the University of Maryland. But on campus, we’ve found as a general rule, even though it’s a place that’s hostile to the Gospel in many ways that people are open to have conversations. That was one of the things that drew us to kind of make one of our targets of mission, college students, is how open they are to discuss matters of truth and eternity. And they’re making all kinds of decisions. So on campus we found that engaging conversations has been pretty easy. I know I personally found it easy to engage in initial conversations, in my context with my neighbors and my kids’ sports teams and stuff, but I have found it very difficult to pass the surface and into more deeper spiritual conversations.

Rob Stephens:
And I don’t know, I think a general reason for that is that people don’t necessarily want to go deeper in their relationships here. And part of that is because this is a highly transitional area. People don’t live here very long. It’s been one of the challenges that we’ve found is, you build a relationship with someone in hopes of speaking Christ into it. And sometimes they are gone before that relationship can even develop. So I just think people in general are more guarded here to go deeper. Also, this being a highly Catholic area, I think a lot of people kind of like I’ve checked that box over here and it’s kind of a shutdown conversation. I’m a part of the Catholic church. So it’s been difficult. It’s been really difficult on a relational level, outside the campus. On the campus, I found it much, much easier. It’s almost like an incubator for Gospel conversations there.

Kevin Smith:
Well, I know you’ve been involved with one of my, there are a few things my wife and I have always supported outside of our local congregation, one was a particular crisis pregnancy ministry in Louisville, and then the other one was FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Louisville. So I know you’ve been involved well there with FCA. So talk a little bit about your involvement there and maybe even other ways that even the broader congregation, you all seek to reach out and engage students and people in College Park.

Rob Stephens:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s a myriad of ways to engage students and people in your context. I have always found that it’s, I want to be all things to all people and adapt to certain situations, but it’s much more natural when you’re speaking into something you know. I was an athlete, I was a college athlete. I wrestled and ran cross country and track in college. My wife and I met running track in college. So I get the athlete athletic world, right. And so that to me was a very natural way to connect with people. I remember even when I was a youth pastor at Gethsemane Baptist, my way to connect with unreached students was to coach at Glenell High School, which was right across from our church. And man, that was awesome. And so, yeah, by God’s grace, I was able to get connected with fellowship of Christian athletes here at the University of Maryland and I just have a heartbeat for athletes.

Rob Stephens:
I know how difficult it is to carry those balance between school and sports. And it seems like the thing that gets discarded is our spiritual life, and so I was able to become a character coach for the baseball team at the University of Maryland. I played baseball as a kid, but I didn’t do that in college, but kind of the same mentality there. That was a wonderful avenue for me to engage a group that gets neglected even by campus ministries, most of the time, because athletes are different, they just have different schedules, different rhythms of life. And so to be able to get in, to go out, hang out at practices, build relationships with guys. I had the privilege over the years to one-on-one disciple a few of the guys and then help them, the missional on their team.

Rob Stephens:
One of the highlights of that ministry was, I got to really pour into a pitcher on the team named Rob Galligan. And so we met for probably a solid year going through The Gospel Primer and just trying to help him grow in his understanding of the Gospel. And then his senior year through FCA, we did a faith, I think it was called Faith and Family Night or something like that. But basically, after the game, people could gather in one section of the stands and Rob came up to share his testimony. Now the night was to be like, Hey, listen, by high school baseball players or their coaches to come, they can hear the Gospel. The cool thing was every last one of Rob’s teammates came up there, sat down, and listened to him share his testimony. Man, that was powerful. And so, it was just a really natural way to engage.

Rob Stephens:
Some other ways that we’ve been able to engage, one of the unique things on campus is the presence of international students. You want to talk about in general, when a college student comes to campus, they’re looking for community, they need it, right. But even more so international students. They’re way away from home. They’re in a different culture. They want friends. And so we’ve been able to partner with International Friends Club, which is an arm of Bridges, which is a part of Cru who just does ministry with international students. And man, that’s been awesome. We’ve been able to assist them in some of their ministries. We’ve set up international dinners where families in our church would sign up to host three or four dinners throughout a semester for a couple of international students, have them over in their home. I know in our house every Christmas, except for the last couple, because of COVID, we would do an international Christmas dinner. So those are two kind of natural ways that we were engaged. Other ways for sure, but those are two that were clear.

Kevin Smith:
Well, we are certainly thankful for the ministry of Aletheia and we’re thankful for your presence there. And we pray for much Gospel fruit in that area. I know many of our listeners are people here in the Maryland Delaware area and that they have students that are coming to the University of Maryland College Park. How can those students bump into Aletheia?

Rob Stephens:
Yeah, man, that’s one of my favorite questions you’ve asked so far. And seriously, I say that because I remember when I was a youth pastor, I was really concerned about my teenagers when they went off to college. And I don’t know that every youth pastor does this, but I would actively seek out Christian campus ministries and churches, and I would reach out to them and go, Hey, little Joey has graduated and he’s coming to University of West Virginia or whatever and can you please just give him a call? And so how they can bump into us? Well, the easiest way is, you guys can feel free to share my email. Reach out to me. We will grab your students right away. We will invite them into our homes. We will meet them on campus.

Rob Stephens:
We’ll feed them food when they’re hungry. We’ll clothe them, if they need it. And more than anything we will pour into and disciple and invest in them. They can also look for us by God’s grace. We’re not just a church that kind of just sneaks on the campus. We have a student organization called Aletheia on the campus. And so we’ll be out there at the First Look Fair. They have a thing just for freshmen. That’s going to be happening in a few weeks called Free Fest. We’ll have a table out there and just look for Aletheia. Come by and say hey. But what I’ve found is if a youth pastor or a pastor, if you don’t have a youth pastor, reaches out, says, Hey, I got the student coming, will you reach out to them, and the quicker we can make that connection, the better, because you’ll get sucked up really quickly. And there’s just a million opportunities to get connected with sometimes really unhealthy things here at the University of Maryland. So we’ll help them move in. I mean, right away, just try to get them connected.

Kevin Smith:
Amen. Well, brother, Pastor Rob Stevens, thank you so much for coming onto Peculiar People. And we will be praying for Aletheia Church in College Park, Maryland. God bless you, brother.

Rob Stephens:
Thank you, brother. Appreciate you guys.